


make your good love known to me

by yogurtgun



Series: The Vranjska Series [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Fix-It, Free Folk have their own language, Languages, M/M, Marriage, Oral Sex, Post-Episode: s06e09 Battle of the Bastards, Winterfell, quite a lot of sex all things considered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 17:07:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19177702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/pseuds/yogurtgun
Summary: Jon thinks father would be cross with him if he knew what he was doing now. In fact everyone, including and especially his father, would drag him by the ear and throw him out.Too bad Jon can’t hold a coherent thought for longer than a moment. He slams down on Tormund’s cock and his thoughts disperse like morning fog, mind silenced by overwhelming piercing pleasure.“Your thighs burning yet?” Tormund asks, pleased with himself.





	make your good love known to me

**Author's Note:**

> The boys spend a bit of downtime in Winterfell. I quite enjoyed writing this. There will be two more installations to this series and next time we meet Danny!

Youth in Winterfell for all the boys had been an exercise in keeping still during history lessons, courtyard training in archery and sword fighting, and hunting ventures into the woods to the North. In addition, Jon remembers time spent in stables, servant’s quarters, and occasional feasts where he’d sit as far away from the high table as possible, hiding from Catelyn Stark’s merciless gaze. Thought she’d been married to the Lord of Winterfell, she was a Tully first, and she’d hated to be reminded of her husband’s transgression. Jon was an insult to her family’s words -- family, duty, honor -- and she hated him for it. 

The one place that was spared of her influence and hidden from her eyes were the men’s baths. Winterfell was built on a hot spring. The same warm water courses through the walls making them warm to the touch, curbing winter’s teeth that snap at the heels of anyone that lingers out in the open for too long.

Oftentimes, after hunting when they’d be smeared with mud and blood smelling of horseback, father would horde Robb, Theon and he into the baths for a good scrubbing before they could sit for supper. The three of them would always compete, whether it was who finished up first, who got their first shave, who could evade the barber for a haircut the longest. Multitudes of irrelevant games to fill the days. 

The Boltons, at least, didn’t touch the Winterfell foundations. 

Jon thinks father would be cross with him if he knew what he was doing now. In fact everyone, including and especially his father, would drag him by the ear and throw him out. 

Too bad Jon can’t hold a coherent thought for longer than a moment. He slams down on Tormund’s cock and his thoughts disperse like morning fog, mind silenced by overwhelming piercing pleasure. 

“Your thighs burning yet?” Tormund asks, pleased with himself. 

Jon groans, rolling his hips bracketed by Tormund’s encouraging hands. There are crescents on Tormund’s skin from Jon’s nails where he’s using him for purchase and precome smeared between their bellies.

When Jon took him to the baths, it was in hopes of making him pleasantly surprised. He’d known Tormund was keen on grooming and Winterfell still possessed scented soap, beard oils and scrubbing salts. 

Both of them lingered in the water, soaking up as much of its warmth as they could. Tormund looked wonderfully relaxed and Jon had wanted to give Tormund his mouth. Tormund, as usual, had not wanted to leave things unequal. 

Now with lavender oil smeared between his thighs, Tormund’s hands gripping Jon’s hips to draw him down to meet his thrusts, he doesn’t even try to muffle the sounds spilling from his mouth. 

He almost forgets Tormund asked him something, focused on the way Tormund’s cock hits a spot inside him, sending jolts of fire up his spine. 

“I think,” he pants, trying desperately to chase after his peak, “my knees have gone numb.”

Tormund laughs at him. As he should, Jon thinks. The baths aren’t exactly the most comfortable place to fuck. The issue is that Jon loves having Tormund under him. He can see his eyes, bite his chest, and he can touch him and drag his nails down his belly. There’s something intoxicating about having the powerful beast of a man that’s Tormund laying on his back, and Jon bringing them both pleasure. 

Jon whimpers, then yelps when Tormund sits up. There’s a moment where Jon feels his cock go so deeply within him that the pleasure mixes with pain until he’s trembling with it. He wraps his hands around Tormund’s neck while the man holds Jon’s things until he settles in a comfortable position. 

Tormund kisses him, delaying the inevitable for only a few moments, before they start moving again. It’s frustratingly slower but Tormund grinds into him so deep that each time he moves sparks flash in Jon’s eyes.

To contain his whimpers is impossible, especially when Tormund passes his lips over and sets his teeth against Jon’s voice box. Jon leans his head to the side all the same, exposing his neck only to allow Tormund’s teeth to leave bite marks into his clavicle and shoulder that have already gone red from beard burn. 

The pleasure is suddenly far too close. Jon bucks his hips, desperately chasing after his own release. He can’t think about anything but it, anything beyond the circle of Tormund’s hands which dig into his hips over old bruises and drive him down over and over again on his cock until Jon thinks he can taste pleasure on his tongue. 

Tormund wraps a hand around Jon’s cock, forcing a shattered groan out of Jon’s throat as he spills between them. His trembling fingers dig into Tormund’s shoulders as his whole body stills, muscles all contracting at once, mind blank. The pleasure continues, extended beyond its lifetime by Tormund who fucks him through it, chasing all of his little noises and gasps with his tongue, kissing Jon until he can do nothing more but slump against him. 

He loves this too, Jon thinks distantly while his muscles twitch each time Tormund thrusts into him. There is nothing like feeling Tormund’s cock inside him after he’s finished. His body is sensitive but he feels no pain yet while pleasure is wrung out of him in an overwhelming cocontion of sensitizations that threaten to become just this side of too much. Jon can do nothing but allow himself to be used and he revels in the simplicity of it: used only for pleasure of a person he cares for. Tormund’s groan against his neck makes Jon attempt to tighten around him, feeling his cock twitching within his body. There are no words, just labored breaths when Tormund releases within him. He trembles, touch turned to stone, face warm, flushed and overcome with pleasure. 

It takes them far too long to catch their breaths, and when they do they laugh at the absurdity of it all. They came to the bath to get clean but they’ve only ended up getting filthy again. An even more absurd thought: they are both alive despite impossible odds.

Tormund slumps back down onto the floor and it takes them far too long to go back into the water and clean off. Jon’s always pliable after sex, and Tormund uses it to his advantage, pushing in two fingers into his loose body. 

“If you keep doing that,” Jon gasps against Tormund’s shoulder, but he loses his words because Tormund  _ does _ keep doing it until Jon’s, impossibly, hard against his hip again. Tormund lifts him out of the water, lays him onto the floor, and sinks back into him. 

####  -

Except for the baths, the one indulgence Jon had was his room. He knows, through Robb, that father and Lady Stark had fought about it. She’d wanted him to have a servant’s room just behind the kitchen, tucked away from the gaze of any guest who might come to visit Winterfell. 

Father had persevered. Though not on the same floor as the family rooms, Jon’s room is bigger than the servants quarters, has a working hearth and enough space for all he needs: a writing desk, an armoire, and a large bed. It was supposed to be his room from the time he’d been too old for a crib until the rest of his days had he stayed in Winterfell. 

He supposes Lady Stark had won that one in the end. After all, he’d barely turned sixteen when he’d left for the Wall. 

Tormund has a smaller room down the hall, for pretenses’ sake, but most nights they spend together. Now, more than ever, secrecy is something that neither Tormund nor he want, but both of them need. 

Jon had not thought he’d be named the King in the North but he’d known that there was no journey for him if he took Winterfell. Yet, now, there seem to be ever more problems than before. Sansa may have not told him that the Knights of the Vale were coming, but when he’d seen who’d ridden with them to Winterfell, he’d known why. Littlefinger had sold her off to the people who’d killed her brother and mother. Who would want to be indebted to a man like that or be a fool to trust him?

“He doesn’t make mistakes,” she’d said with a deadly sort of certainty colored in vitriol. 

Though Jon may not know what use Littlefinger had of handing Sansa to the Boltons, it matters little when it comes to Jon. Littlefinger will pay for what he’s done.

Jon is glad Brienne of Tarth is with his sister. Out of all knights he’s met in his life, she is the only one who has shown what real chivalry means without bearing the title. Even Tormund has taken a liking to her, though Jon imagines it’s because she is, in so many words, the epitome of an ideal woman in his culture. She’s strong, tall, ruthless, and if Sansa is to be believed, stubbornly loyal. 

Jon’s skin prickles where Tormund’s hand passes over his chest and he turns to curl under Tormund’s chin, chasing after the warmth.

“Where did you go?” Tormund asks in the old tongue. Whenever they talk, be it in public or in their chambers, during these small hours when duty is a distant thought and they’re just men not yet fully awake, they have grown accustomed to using it 

“Thinking about the past,” Jon answers, tracing the scars that criss-cross Tormund’s skin. It had taken him too long to indulge in this and now he feels as if he can’t get enough. Each night is too short. Even when he thinks he’s content, in the morning he realizes he might have missed out on some important moment even though they were just sleeping. 

Jon is restless and unsettled. He doesn’t belong in Winterfell as he should, doesn’t fit in the way he wants. He feels as if he’s trying too hard to fit into Robb’s role, even though he can never  _ be _ Robb and his shoes, just like their father’s, can never be filled. All he can try to do is be better. 

“Sansa’s giving me grief over my  _ dubious _ choices,” he says sighing against Tormund’s shoulder. 

He’d not thought that taking away family homes would be met with such affront from her. No matter what Umbers and Karstarks did, it doesn’t mean he’s going to oust families from their homes for the mistakes of their fathers. 

Sansa had reminded him later, privately, that nobody thought that way about them. “You and I will be paying for Robb’s and Father’s decisions for the rest of our lives, Jon. That’s what means having a family name. That’s what it means being a Stark.”

He should have known that acceptance, from her, would come as a double edged sword. 

“She thinks she knows everything.” 

Jon passes a hand over Tormund chest across his flank, trying desperately to get warm. Some nights are easier than others. When he is cold, he barely feels it. However when Tormund touches him, just like the way they’re enveloped together now, he realizes that his body is not as it should be and the numbness within him begins to hurt.

Tormund laughs, bringing Jon closer to his chest. “Well,” Tormund starts, ”she was right about the Bolton fucker. She was right about your brother dying. She was also right about half dozen other things since we came here.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking her side,” Jon mumbels, trying to make his voice sound offended. All he really feels is desperately fond. 

“I am honest with you,” Tormund says. “And because I’m honest I will tell you this. We would have lost if the knights didn’t come. You and I and every other poor fucker who was on that field, would have been bird food. And I will tell you another thing--”

Tormund runs a hand down Jon’s back. “You and I both know that, were your sister one of the Free Folk, there wouldn’t be a King but a Queen in the North.”

Jon feels himself still. “I’ve met with the chieftains. They’re all men.”

Tormund laughs at him again, but it’s not unkind. It never is. “We’re chieftains because we know how to kill when it comes to battle and listen well during peace times. But who do you think speaks to us? Who do you think keeps the supplies numbers, who teaches the little ones how to hunt, how to fight, how to keep warm, who teaches us the knot words and sigils? Women have always ruled Jon.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it.”

“It is. Would you even question it, if she were your brother and not sister?”

No, Jon thinks, pulling away. If it were Robb, he would have been named King in the North and he would be ruling now.  _ What is different between the two? _ , he asks himself. Sansa and he were raised on the same food, lived in the same castle, taught the same things, only while Sansa had eight years of living in terror under Lannisters, then under Littlefinger and Boltons, Jon was traipsing through the northern wastelands. 

Tormund’s fingers find their way into Jon’s hair, but not for too long. They slip lower, to touch his cheek and neck. “She wanted her home, so you gave her her home back. Not let her run it the way she wants to.”

Jon is silent for a long time, long enough he thinks Tormund might have fallen asleep. When he speaks again, it’s as if he’s talking to night itself. “This is all so easy for you isn’t it?” 

It surprises him when Tormund replies, voice soft and half way to sleep. “Not easy. Simple. But I’ve had to deal with Thenns and giants. You try talking to fucking giants.”

Despite himself, Jon feels the humor relax his brow. He closes his eyes but rest, a slippery wild hare, refuses to let Jon catch it that night.

####  -

In the end, the easiest solution proves to be the best. Jon had not wanted to be King, and he finds it simple to slowly mitigate his duties, transferring them to Sansa. To provide a unified front, they spend long lunches, and sometimes even evenings, speaking together on different matters until they come to the best solution. 

Sometimes he yells at her. More often than not, she yells at him. Yet, Jon knows that they’re not working against each other but together against the problem. 

He’s just out of one of their meetings when he spots Tormund in the courtyard. Jon follows his gaze which lands on Brienne. At once, Jon doesn’t know whether to be impressed by her, as is his usual feeling whenever he spots her, or feel envious. 

Jon would like to think he is above jealousy. It’s ugly and turns poisonous and hurtful too quickly. Still, despite the fact he knows that, he can’t stop himself from feeling it any more than he can stop it leaving a bitter taste on his tongue.

Jon takes a breath and tries to school his face into something he can control. He’d come to find Tormund for a reason. As most times in Winterfell, Tormund recognizes his steps and turns just in time to see him approaching. 

“Do you have a moment?” Jon asks, aware he’s being watched. 

In the courtyard eyes are always pointed at someone and now they are pointed at him. Thankfully, privacy is always guaranteed because Jon persists on talking to Tormund in the old tongue. Lest Littlefinger or any other spy learn it, their conversations are safe.

Tormund nods, and as customary, follows after Jon without comment. 

Jon leads the man to the eastern part of the castle, past the gates to the Godswood. Once they step into the snow, they walk side by side until they reach the weirwood. He hears Tormund’s gasp, and smiles softly to himself. 

“I thought you fuckers cut them all down,” Tormund says walking eagerly towards the tree then sitting below it to look at the face carved into the trunk. 

“No,” Jon says smiling. “The people here worship the Old Gods too.”

Tormund looks up at him and extends his hand, gesturing for Jon to join him. Jon lets himself be pulled down to sit right next to Tormund. 

“In front of a tree like this, I was given a name. Tormund: for strength and for the color of my hair. To be a fire in the night for my people. My daughters were named in front of a tree like this too: Munda, firstdaughter, to be the edge of the sword drawn in both protection and terror, and Drys, seconddaughter, named for battle and riot.”

Jon looks from Tormund to the one carved into the weirwood, letting his soft words wash over him. Once he’s finished, Jon says, “Here, my father married Catelyn Tully, Sansa’s mother. And his grandfather before him, married my grandmother.”

“In front of the gods as it should be,” Tormund nods. “My mother married in front of a weirwood tree as well.”

Jon clears his throat. “You and Anka...?”

Tormund gives him a long look as if to tell Jon he’s being stupid. He switches to common only to say, “Marriage, as in  _ veza _ not  _ odnos _ .”

“Oh,” Jon says, feeling his face flush. Tormund had told him both terms in the old tongue but Jon had forgotten.

Tormund smirks and turns back to look upon the weirwood. He says something in an accents Jon doesn’t understand then stands. 

On the way back, Jon spots Brienne still training with her squire. Next to him, Tormund perks up and stops, drawing Jon closer to him. 

“Do you see her, Jon?” he says conspiratorially. “She’s  _ magnificent _ . Look, oh that would have cleaved a man in two-- Munda’s going to be just like her when she grows up. Imagine the kids she could make--”

Though Tormund’s hand is on his shoulder something about the way he speaks and what he says, be it the mention of his family or the tone of voice he’s using, has Jon stepping back. An ugly feeling in his chest rises until it chokes him, and it tastes too close to envy for comfort. He’s ashamed even to admit to it, but it renders him mute all the same.

Tormund turns to look at him when no reply comes. Despite his efforts to mask his feelings, Tormund’s eyes see beyond the pretense and unravel his shame with nothing more than a single, lingering, look. The glee from his face disappears, and the blue of Tormund’s eyes catches fire. Jon knows that look. He’s been at the other end of it every day.

Licking his lips, Jon clears his throat and steps away. “There are--”

Tormund’s hand shoots out and wraps around Jon’s bicep, making his already speeding heart startle between his lungs. 

“ _ Room _ ,” he says, promises thickening the sound of the word. “Let’s go to our room.”

####  -

Jon’s naked back meets the wall and all he can do is groan and lean his head back onto the wall. Tormund’s mouth rests on his throat, where the man lets out a litany of praise Jon can barely hear over the pounding in his ears. 

His thighs tremble as they squeeze around Tormund’s waist, even though Tormund grips them in his rough hands to hold him up. He’d never though he’d like this, never thought he’d let anyone ever get so close as to have him pinned at their mercy. But Jon is not at Tormund’s mercy; he’s exactly where he wants to be.

“ _ Vranjska _ ,” Tormund says, biting his lip before pulling him into another bruising kiss.

Between them, Jon’s cock leaks as it rubs against Tormund’s belly. Yes, the look in Tormund’s eye has always led them to this: pleasure, bruises, and gasping Tormund’s name on a particularly brutal trust that has his toes curling. 

Jon screws his eyes closed, trying desperately not to claw Tormund’s shoulders. He would feel ridiculous, what with his britches hanging from his leg, the way Tormund’s are around his knees, the fact that it’s broad daylight and there’s nowhere to hide. It feels like he’s being claimed, as if he’s being marked. Jon loves every mark Tormund leaves on him. 

“Really?” Tormund asks, intoning it to send another bolt of heat down to Jon’s belly. He’d said that out loud. 

“You must know--” Jon tries, but air fails him when Tormund fucks into him. He gasps, waits another moment then repeats, “You must know, already--”

“That you’re jealous?” Tormund asks, his bushy eyebrows rising. “I’ve noticed.”

“I’m not,” Jon snaps but it sound petulant even to his own ears. Leave it to Tormund to draw the worst possible impulses out of him. “I was thinking of your knee.”

Though the wound had healed, Jon knows Tormund still experiences pain from it, especially with the change of weather. It had taken Jon days to talk Tormund into trying the knee brace Maester Luwin had designed for him and getting used to it for Tormund is still an exercise in patience.

Jon sees Tormund’s eyes flash as he stills. His mouth spreads into a slow grin. “Hold on tightly.”

Jon’s feet and hands lock around him just before Tormund steps away and Jon’s back leaves the wall. 

“Tormund,” Jon says, not quite sure but Tormund only laughs at him. 

“You’re as light as two flies fucking,  _ vranjska _ . I won’t drop you.” Tormund groans then says, “You’re really squeezing around me now.”

He starts shallowly thrusting inside Jon, shifting him up and down. When Jon sees his hands aren’t shaking, he gives up and lets Tormund prove his point. 

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” Jon tells him, but earns only another laugh. 

It takes them only a short time to return to their previous tempo. Tormund is strong, stronger than Jon had really thought, and he doesn’t know if to be awed by the fact he can keep holding Jon up, or concerned to be finding it out in this sort of way. However, Jon stops thinking when Tormund finds a good angle, and for a while only floats in pleasurable sensations that rolls over him.

He would have allowed Tormund to continue but he feels a tremor go through him that has his body stiffening. “Alright,” Jon breathes, blinking, clawing for coherency. “Take me to bed now, Tormund.”

“And not even a blush from you,” Tormund says, playing at being insulted. “The world really is going tits up.”

Jon doesn’t dare lift his hands so instead he bites Tormund’s shoulder, before the man starts moving. It’s only a few steps, and when Tormund deposits him down, it’s with more care than Jon had expected. 

It’s ridiculous, Jon knows, yet his cock twitches against his belly regardless. He pushes himself up the bed, kicking his britches off, and Tormund follows only enough to get his knees on the blankets before he grabs Jon’s legs, drags him lower where he wants him, and fuck back into him. 

For a while, all Jon feels is them rutting together, clawing and biting at each other, until Tormund slows down, starts drawing it out, grinding into him. 

“What are you doing?” Jon asks, voice weak and ruined. The moment they’d been in the room, Jon had been on his knees, sucking Tormund’s cock and letting him fuck his mouth until he’d been crying. Somehow, he doubts that’s the reason for the way he sounds now even to his own ears.

“You are jealous,” Tormund says, as amazed as before. He laughs breathily in the crook of Jon’s throat, hands gripping Jon’s legs so tightly Jon knows there will be bruises. 

Jon groans and squeezes his hands around Tormund’s neck. Embarrassment is a mild word. 

With how slow Tormund’s moving, Jon can feel his cock within him better, the way he stretches Jon, the sensation of having Tormund between his thighs. Tormund isn’t careful, but he’s just on the border of it, and Jon doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Tormund’s hands move up to his hips and trace over every inch of skin they can reach. How something like this can get overwhelming Jon isn’t sure but the longer he’s held, the more he feels as if he’s shaking apart under Tormund’s unwavering attention. 

At first, he’d thought Tormund was making fun of him. Then he’d thought Tormund was fucking him to prove him wrong. Now, he isn’t so sure anymore. He can barely think at all. 

“I know,” Jon finally admits, “and I know it’s irrational but--”

Tormund lifts himself up enough to meet Jon’s gaze. “ _ Vranjska _ ,” he says, affectionate as always. Jon looks at his incredible eyes, and realizes that, no, there’s nothing to apologize for. Tormund  _ likes _ it. 

“Why?” Jon asks. 

Tormund laughs, kissing him gently. “Do you want to keep me, Jon Snow?”

Jon feels the realization pouring into his mind like wine into a chalice. He loves him, Jon thinks. He’s loved him for a while now. 

Tormund sees it on his face, and laughs again, kissing him all over, until their hips start moving again, stealing the laughter from them and turning it into gasps. 

-

Ghost lays by Jon’s side, swishing his tail back on forth while Jon rubs under his ear. Across from them, Tormund is with his daughters, teaching them how to read. They’ve had good progress, especially since Davos had offered Tormund help. 

Jon listens to them but mostly he’s staring into the fire. Quiet moments are rare, and Jon often times finds them only in Tormund’s tent outside Winterfell’s walls. 

Both Munda and Drys have grown since the time he’d first met them. He’s no longer interesting to them, just background information, something already seen. Or perhaps, Jon admits, he visits far too often for them to get fond. 

By the time they’ve finished and the children have gone, Jon has fallen back into his contemplative daze. He’s snapped out of it only when Ghost nips his fingers then starts licking them. He notices Tormund’s looking at him and feels aware of himself. The only one who doesn’t dislodge him out of his musings is Tormund, satisfied to share the silence with him.

“I never did ask you why you wanted to learn,” Jon says after a while. 

“I don’t really need it where we’ll be going,” Tormund says, “but that doesn’t mean some won’t want to stay.”

“You’re leaving Drys and Munda in Winterfell?”

“Not just them. Maybe the change will be hard for us old folk, but the children will get used to it. It will be better for them to stay south. Now that we’re here, they’ve seen opportunities they never had before.”

“You would settle? Learn our ways and speak our tongue?” Jon says, disbelieving. Not because they couldn’t, but because they never wanted to before. The Free Folk pride themselves on their culture, on being free from the rules of Lords and Kings, free to roam the great white expanse. 

“What makes us  _ us _ ?” Tormund asks. “They will have our people, our stories, our teachings to guide them. This is what they want.”

Jon sees that it’s difficult on Tormund to speak of it. True, the children are well taught, but they’re taught how to survive the perpetual winter, not to navigate through southern rules of men. 

“They’re young and could still change their mind,” Jon offers. 

Tormund shakes his head. “Pah!” he exclaims. “The important thing is that they have a choice.”

Choice, Jon thinks. He had a choice too: stay in Winterfell under Catelyn Stark’s cold eye and have nothing, or make something of himself and serve the realm of men. But that was no choice at all. Time and time again, Jon is reminded that Tormund is a wiser and more loving man that any other he has met. 

“Choice,” Jon says. “And consequences.”

####  -

There are good nights and bad nights. On good nights, Jon finds himself easily closing his eyes, dreaming of nothing at all. On bad nights, frightening dreams chase him into wakefulness after which sleep is as distant as the sunrise. For the bad nights, during which Jon cannot bare to be touched, Tormund oftentimes fills a skin of warm water and lets Ghost curl around him when he cannot. At one point, a whole kettle had appeared in Jon’s room just for that.

Jon’s body aches. He’s cold and stiff, and his mind wanders over the past, recounting strange images which make him question himself. The room is stifling. He feels as if the bad dreams are all stacked on top of his chest, making it difficult to breathe, the dark walls squeezing in around him until they feel like the coffin he’d left empty.

It hurts to stand, and it hurts to be away from the warmth of the bed, but he pushes himself up regardless. Once he cools enough, the warmth becomes a distant memory, a phantom sensation, and his body adjusts once again to the perpetual numbness.

When he was a child, he would have never been allowed to wander the castle during night but now, there is nobody who can stop him. He puts on his boots and picks up the first thing that comes under his hand to throw around himself, then slips away from the room. 

His feet carry him up to the battlements. Facing north, as he breathes sharp air that grows spikes in his lungs that refuse to leave and are cold enough to burn, it’s easy to admit to himself that something isn’t quite right. He’d come back from the nothingness, but not all of him. No matter how much Tormund tries, Jon feels as if there is no fire that can keep him warm. There’s nothing to thaw the shard of ice in his chest. 

He has no idea how to fix himself. He doesn’t know if there’s anything to be fixed, or if anything  _ can _ fix him. 

From the battlements, he goes down, ignores the guards, and slips into the family crypts. There was a time when he thought his father knew everything. He’d been Robb’s, Theon’s, and Jon’s paragon. Though he’d always loved Uncle Benjen, who’d at times appeared more free than any other man he’d known, in the end it was always his father who had been his example.

There was a time when Jon thought he knew everything there is to know, starting from his name -- Jon Snow, a proper lord’s bastard. 

Unlike all proper lords’ bastards, he got a lord’s son’s education. Reading, writing, fighting, etiquette. He got the scorn, but he got three meals a day and a warm place to sleep, a brother to love, a brother to hate. A sister to love, a sister to hate. A father to love, a mother to hate. Two little ones he didn’t know what to think of, except that he wanted to protect them, because they were a part of his family. 

There is a balance, he thinks, like summer and winter. But he is no wiser now than he’d been when he was a child. He thought he knew how his life was going to be. There were expectations of him: to go to the Wall, never sire a bastard to contend with the Stark name, never lay claim over Robb’s future and his children’s future, to serve and protect, become Lord Commander, maybe if he’s lucky, and most likely die of exposure of some other Night Watch suited illness. 

He thought he knew what  _ the world _ meant but he’d never left Winterfell, and he knew only as much as he’s been able to see and read and learn, which, for a Northern bastard, he supposes should have been enough. But he knew nothing at all. He felt as if all life offered him were shadows, hints and apparitions that never bore any opacity. A picture of an apple never did make anybody’s belly full. 

In retrospect, he had it good. He was lesser only to Robb, and only in a few things. Other men, other bastards, could not say the same.

Then summer came and melted all the snow, burned the fields, and decided to bake the earth until nothing was left but a dessert. 

Ygritte had been right to tell him the truth. When he’d gone over the Wall, he’d thought he had everything figured out. He was wrong. 

In the far, true, north, there are no constrictions of who he is, and no expectation on who he is supposed to be. Not truly. Not where it matters. He is a man first, a living thing, and he needs to eat, sleep, piss. The rolling hills of eternal snow don’t give two shits about who his father was, or two shits about how lopsided his writing script is. Neither do the free folk. 

They care that he is Crow, and they call him that. They care that he can hunt for himself, and they care that he learns their tongues, many as they are, and that he can respect their rules and follow orders. 

John takes quick to the latter, but the other two are a slow go. Ygritte made fun of him for his hunting, a prolific archer as she was. She, and the others, laughed at him for clunking through their tongues, words strange and too large, and too flat in his mouth. But they did so in that sort of way, he feels like, he’d laughed at Arya when first she’d started babbling as a child. 

At the time, Jon is that. A child pretending at a man’s game. 

Looking at his father’s face captured in stone, there is no advice and no knowledge he feels it can give him. The dead can’t hear, Jon reminds himself. The crypt is as silent as it had been when Jon had entered it. 

Infuriated by himself, Jon leaves with a quick step. Outside, the dawn is yet but a suggestion. He sees the figure only after it sees him, but even in darkness, he can recognize the man who has kept his night warm as best he could.

“ _ Ready? _ ” Tormund asks, holding out a cloak and pushing gloves onto his hands. Jon realizes then that he’d been wearing Tormund’s furs as a cloak the whole time.

Still, he nods and lets himself be herded towards the castle. He doesn’t deserve this concern, and he doesn’t deserve the man’s attention. He is glad and relieved to have both.

####  -

Mornings, as always, bring clarity and better moods than any nights before them. Jon’s morning brings heavy sleep which he hasn’t had since before he’d left Castle Black, and a hand in his hair, which he hadn’t been able to have since coming to Winterfell. 

Tormund isn’t a late sleeper which means he’s let Jon sleep on him even though, when he finally cracks his eyes, it has long passed dawn. 

Jon doesn’t have it in himself even to curse. All the consequences of this will catch up eventually, he thinks with a sort of distant off-handedness. But now all he feels is warmth, Tormund’s hands, and his morning hardness.

Jon finally wills himself to move. Some joints creak, some crack, others pop. He sounds and feels much like a shambling corpse. When he looks up at Tormund still under morning confusion, the man merely brushed away the hair out of his eyes and smiles a soft, small, private smile.

“ _ Sweetheart _ ,” he says. Only he doesn’t. Not really. There is no translation for what he says, for what it means. Sweetheart, darling, heart. The center of my being. It’s all wrapped up together, intermingled, and Jon feels overwhelmed and loved at once. The best he can translate it to is sweetheart because the word itself is sweet, brings the memory of honey on his tongue, and the heart is there really as it rightfully should be. 

Jon has gotten far too sentimental. And yet, when Tormund repeats it he shudders, closes his eyes, opens then to the same image. 

“Should have woken me,” Jon says. 

“The last you were seen, you were already marching to the  _ wildling _ camp.”

“The servants will know,” Jon says. 

“They already know. They  _ always _ know,” Tormund huffs out with a laugh. “They wash your smallclothes. The sheets. Clean up the oil. If you wanted subtle, you should have led with that.”

Jon flushes. Tormund is right. They always took care of it themselves before. It felt good to let himself be coddled again. Besides, cleaning up oil was a nightmare and better left to practiced hands. 

“You’re the one who likes cleaning his hands on the sheets,” Jon replies. 

“Oh, alright, next time you ask me to pull your hair--”

“Washcloths,” John says quickly, before Tormund can finish, only because he knows that if he makes the threat, Tormund will follow up on it at least once just so he can prove that he can and to annoy John which, inevitably, always leads them to more sex. “I propose washcloths.”

Tormund looks at him, then laughs. “Now  _ that’s _ subtle.”

Jon likes the sound of his laughter. He always has. He smiles, and feels himself become lighter. 

“Never had to worry about this up north,” Jon smirks, lifting himself up to kiss Tormund, feeling his beard prickling his cheeks. They’re already red from kissing Tormund last night, so it doesn’t matter what he does now.

He has beard burn all over him, even all the way down to between his legs, and, mortifyingly, between his cheeks, when Tormund had decided that the best way to spend the night would be to eat Jon out until he’d been a whimpering, trembling, mess. He remembers, clearly, Tormund telling him, “I’m an old man, Jon, I can’t keep fucking you to sleep.” 

And yet, he’d still made Jon come on his fingers, and then once again, on his cock, when he’d flipped him over, ground into him, held him, as he shuddered apart. 

“No, we had to worry about our cocks falling off if we took them out,” Tormund snorts. He has taken to Winterfell heat like cat to sunlight. He positively basks in it. However, outside of the chambers, he is made uncomfortable by it, as if, should he allow himself to get accustomed, it would seep into his bones and refuse to leave even once he returned home. 

Jon lifts himself up properly so he’s straddling Tormund. The blankets from his back slip and pool around his waist. Should someone see him now, they would think he’d been mauled. Beside the scars, his reddened and tender skin, Tormund had made an effort to leave his marks in the form of bites and bruises. 

Jon wonders if letting him know he likes it had been a particularly smart idea. Laying claim to him was one thing when he belonged to himself and another when he belongs to the Lords of the North. 

“You’re thinking about some shit again, aren’t you,” Tormund tells him, tracing his hands up his thighs. “You want to fuck or not?”

Jon laughs. “You said something about oil--”

Soon enough Jon finds himself forgetting about belonging and claims except that which they have on each other as his body sparks and explodes with sensation each time he sinks down onto Tormund’s cock. The warmth within him, caused by his affections for the unruly beautiful man underneath him, spreads and rises his temperature until he feels he’s sweltering, peeling, burning alive. 

In reality, he does nothing more but twist his hips, move up and down, ride Tormund quickly, the way he needs it, they way they both do, until his thighs are burning, until he already feels the aches that will follow him through the day. What a picture he would make, should someone walk in. Hair loose, and flying everywhere, bitten, bruised, reddened, leaking all over Tormund’s belly while impaling himself on wildling cock. He considers it and laughs because as horrible as it would be it would also be infinitely amusing. 

Maybe the stories are true. Maybe kissed-by-fire means something after all. In this world with so much magics, some of which are strong enough to even bring people alive, maybe it’s a long-forgotten incantation for binding fire into living flesh. Perhaps Tormund had been kissed by fire and all that heat is now pushed into Jon through Tormund’s hands, his skin where it connects with Jon’s, and where he drives within Jon’s willing, loose, sloppy body, only to connect them in a primal embrace and burn them together, driving pleasure within them strong enough that they have to gasp, moan and yell. 

He feels Tormund shaking apart underneath him as he spills inside Jon, but he’s too far gone to inspect it any further. Tormund’s pleasure brings forth his own pleasure, and when he comes he feels himself consumed by a raging fire, so strong that, for a moment, it erases the coldness he brought back with him from the long sleep which has settled within his bones.

####  -

Good news ring on seven bells. Or, as Edd would put it somewhat more mildly, if it rains it pours. 

Sam had done as he had promised. The product of his promise lays on his table, read three times over. There’s dragonglass on Dragonstone. If they can mine it, forge it, they can have weapons for the great war. Jon has no ships and he has no right to Dragonstone, lest he try and talk with Cersei.

It’s good information, he is sure, but he cannot use it. Yet, the more time passes the worse he feels. He should be doing something, anything at all. 

He’s discussing their options with Sansa when another raven arrives. He reads: Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Dragonstone, fleet, Tyrion Lannister, and he knows what he must do.

It’s time, too, to let Sansa know.

“If there are two queens, why can’t there be three?” He smiles at her, and refrains from touching her hand. That’s the most he can do for her. If they survive the Long Night Jon will not stay in Winterfell. This crown has never been his birthright to begin with.

####  -

Sansa and he prepare. They send back a reply by raven ahead with Jon’s own message for Tyrion: “Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not.” 

It will take him ten days to reach White Harbor. With the right ship, it will take him another twenty to reach Dragonstone. He has supplies and coin for the return trip, and he will take Davos with him, along with a retinue of guards the other lords insist on. 

Before his departure there is only one other thing he must do. 

Tormund waits for him in the Godswood, sitting in what has become his usual spot in front of the weirwood. Though the winter has come, it has proved to be a nice day without snow and only a perpetual fog drawn over the sun to dull its warmth. 

“You’re one crazy bastard,” Tormund tells him once Jon sits next to him. It’s not disapproval in his voice, as much as grudging respect; it takes a certain kind of stupidity and bravery to do what he’s doing. Or, Jon thinks, something he’s more familiar with -- despair.

“Then you will like what I have to ask of you,” Jon replies, trying to maintain a light tone. However, once Tormund looks at him all of his pretenses slip away, leaving only worry and the crushing weight of duty. 

“There aren’t enough men on the Wall to hold all three castles, and the closest one to Hardhome is Eastwatch-by-the-Sea,” Jon says holding Tormund’s gaze. “We need to know how much time we have left.”

Tormund’s lips press together to form a firm, grim line. He looks away, towards the tree’s face. “Going North now is stupid and dangerous. You’re asking  _ wildlings _ to man the Wall.”

“I am,” Jon says, still looking at Tormund’s face. “Because I trust you. We’ve both seen what’s out there. But I  _ am  _ only asking.”

Tormund snorts and says, “You send any of your southern fools, they’ll run at the first real winter chill.”

Jon agrees. He knows Tormund will run a tight ship, and he knows now to trust the Free Folk more than he can trust any of his northmen. 

“If you asked me before, I would have told you you’re mad. But you’re doing an even stupider thing, going to the dragon queen,” Tormund says and finally returns Jon’s look. “Fine, I’ll do it.”   
  


“Thank you,” Jon says and means it. “Take Ghost with you. Better than he stay so far south.”

“If he wishes to go,” Tormund allows, though they both know that at this point Ghost has grown attached to Tormund as much as Tormund to him.

Now, all he needs to do is send a raven with instructions to Edd.

He’s already thinking ahead, but Tormund’s hand on his own stops him and jerks him back to the moment. “Do you know what this means?” Tormund asks him, and Jon nods. They’re both heading into danger, both knowing the likelihood they survive is terribly small. 

Their days at Winterfell are coming to an end, and Jon has no assurance he will see Tormund again. Just like Tormund has no guarantee Daenerys Stormborn will not end Jon’s life. 

Jon takes a breath and summons courage to wrap his fingers around Tormund’s. They’re close enough that their shoulders are touching, and he can hide their hands between them. It’s only for the weeping eyes of the Old Gods and the weirwood to see.

When Jon speaks again, he does so with so much feeling it threatens to overwhelm him. 

“Marry me.”

He looks at Tormund’s who’s shocked, before his blue eyes fill with emotions and he squeezes Jon’s hand. 

“Only if you marry me too,” Tormund replies. Jon huffs out a laugh and Tormund laughs with him as they look back towards the weirwood. 

“I don’t know the words. Not the way you do it.”

“I don’t know the words the way  _ you  _ do it.” Tormund laughs. “It’s easy. I’ll teach you.”

Jon nods, and Tormund smiles at him, properly takes his hand, and straightens his back. Jon looks at the weirwood’s face. It will be their only witness.

“We swear in war and peace to stand, heart to heart and hand to hand. Mark, O Gods, and hear us now, confirming this our Sacred Vow.”

Jon repeats the words, and when he’s finished Tormund leans in and kisses him. It lasts only for a moment but it settles Jon, and when they pull away he knows that their promises are sealed. Tormund smiles at him, impossibly warm, and Jon cannot bare but feel the same.

Jon hears the gate screeching open and he turns, startled. Davos lumbers through the snow, a determined man, and Jon looks at Tormund for a moment, before he makes his decision. 

He stands, but doesn’t leave Tormund’s side. 

“You grace,” Davos says, once he’s only a few steps away. “We’re done with preparations. We’ll be able to depart on the morrow.”

####  \- 

Death gives a strange perspective, Jon thinks as he sits in his room. 

His body feels strange to him, uncomfortable, too tight or too distant. It’s like a helmet, wrapped around his head for protection, but cold and unfeeling. It leaves too much space for his emotions, which have ample room to fill and grow. It’s strange to be forced to listen to them, but with the gaping maw of sensation left by his body, there is only that left: his hopes, his care for Sansa, concern for his people, and a deep well of fear for what there is to come. 

The fact is: Jon died. He died and he never wishes it upon anyone premarchurely. There is a difference between fading away with sleep to the final resting place, taken by old age, and when you’re torn away from the world when you don’t wish to go, filled with thoughts, feelings, and regrets. 

Jon had not wished to go. Mostly, because he regretted leaving. His regret lies a couple of feet away, slumbering soundly in his bed, covered with furs that would have dwarfed other men. Tormund, as usual, manages to look ridiculously comfortable and ridiculously fitting in whichever situation he appears in. Jon only needs to turn his head and see him to think, ‘Oh yes, of course he should be here.’ 

Jon isn’t sure if it’s favoritism. He can’t tell much lately at all. Whatever shackles he’d been bound in  _ before _ have been bled out of him. All he is now, he supposes, some might call the basest form of himself. 

He’d left Winterfell, a boy, and he’d grown in the bizarrely cruel landscape beyond the Wall. Within him, the cold has grown as well. He’d been carrying the seed of the wilderness within him ever since he’d stepped into their camp, ever since he made himself spit the first words of their tongue. There’s nothing else now. He is a hollow husk of a lord’s bastard filled with a wilderness that has grown inside him. The seed sprouted long ago. Now, a forest is within him.

Jon wishes he had a proclivity for drink. Other men, better man than him, had always worried their fears into drink, but the half-filled goblet in his hands is still half-filled, there only for familiarity, for contact. He is not those men and the wine tastes bitter besides. 

He puts the goblet down next to the chair he’s sitting in, near the dying hearth. He’d tried soaking in the warmth but it seems, ridiculously enough, the only time he feels truly warm is when he’s in bed with Tormund. Enveloped by his arms, often the man curled around him or half on top, his weight pressing him into the bedding, the heat returns to him in bits from the tips of his fingertips until he’s warm all over.

That’s when he feels most fragile too. Heartbroken. Maybe just broken. 

He doesn’t mind that the other man sees him like that. They both have seen far, far worse. The problem is that sometimes it can get overwhelming, painful, as if he’s dead and rising all over again. That fear and regret he’d felt then followed him through death and back into his life, where now they’re trying to push out of him through is dreams and tear themselves free. He’d woken Tormund up screaming many nights. However, when the dreams dissipate, the silent terror is worse. 

It’s always a bad sign, Jon has learned, when he thinks of Ygritte, and he’s been thinking about her often lately. He thinks of that death and what had followed after it.  _ Who  _ followed after it. Who helped him through it. 

The free folk are bizarrely unselfish, both with others and themselves. Jon was taught for so long to remain stoic, to be serious, to never let himself be at the mercy of people by saying what he truly thought. The free folk are liberated even of that. There is time for seriousness, when the elders gather and discuss where they should migrate, where the best hunt is, what the weather will bring. But there is no shame in emotions, no shame in openly hugging, crying, wailing, kissing, loving. No teasing. Nothing more than a ‘think about frostbite’ slipped between conversations. 

While he was with Ygritte, he’d still behaved as if he were in Winterfell. After, he’d left even that. It didn’t feel like it mattered anymore. He always imagined he would die the next day, two, a week. And Tormund was uncaring, and brazen, and cocky, and irritating. He didn’t give two shits, in the true free folk fashion. 

Jon has learned there is no shame in crying but he has yet to learn some other lessons he should have learned a long time ago.

He wishes now he were in Tormund’s tent again. This castle’s walls bring comfort as much as they bring bad memories, old behaviours. He wishes he has changed, both in mind, if he has in body. But these are different changes: one willing, and one forced upon him. His body is not his own anymore. 

“You’re brooding,” Tormund’s voice cuts through his thoughts, sharp around the familiar vowels of the old tongue. They rarely speak in common anymore. Only when it’s necessary for others. 

“I think I prefer it when you called me a miserable bastard instead,” Jon replies, though the usual wells of humor reserved for Tormund are sapped dry tonight. 

“Fine. You’re brooding, you miserable bastard. Better?” 

Jon turns to look at him with a wry smile, and feels something within him thaw. They have no more time left together. At dawn, Jon will ride to White Harbour. Tormund will linger, only to check up on Sansa, then go North. Both, Jon knows, suicide missions. 

Tormund, who usually sleep on his belly, is looking at him now from where he’s hanging half-off the bed, face in Jon’s pillow, back half-uncovered to the cold Jon cannot feel.

“That would suggest I had a brood,” Jon finally replies, thought it’s far too late for it to be a witty remark. No, he’s learned word-jousting only when Tormund had barrelled into his life and decided to make fun of him with his particular combination of intelligence and acuity. 

He uses the words to distract and deflect but, just as Tormund had learned new words from Jon, he has also learned to completely ignore his attempts at subversion.

“Then come brood on me,” Tormund says, turning onto his back. “It’s fucking cold out there.”

Frankness, too, had at first been strange. But now Jon revels in it when he’s, once again, within the walls. 

“That’s not really how it works,” Jon says though he still stands. He places a log into the dying embers before he turns back to Tormund. 

Jon had gone to bed naked and now he returns to it naked, leaving the blanket he’d wrapped himself in at the foot of the bed. 

Tormund shifts to accommodate, and Jon climbs atop him, straddling him, until Tormund pulls him down, hissing all the while he rubs his hands, back, and legs to warm him up.

One day Jon will not be surprised by this kind of care but that day is not upon him yet. He tucks his head under Tormund’s jaw, lays on his chest, and lets himself feel safe. He melts under Tormund’s hands, his affections, and gradually, he feels himself warm from inside out, and outside in. There is no place like bed with the man under him. 

Selfishly, he thinks this is what he will think of when he dies at the hands of the Night King. But maybe, just maybe, he will rise again. If he has done it once, there is no guarantee he cannot have another miracle. Who knows anymore what the world will offer him? Dragonglass, White Walkers, and dragons from the east sailing for Westeros. It has all gone ass-over-tits and Jon, at this point, is going where the wind carries him. 

“I miss the North,” Jon says after a while. 

Tormund makes a sound in his chest. Agreement. But then he also says, “You’re a fucking lunatic.”   
  


Jon, despite his sour mood, laughs. “It was simpler there. I miss it.”

“I will never understand you southerners. What you make up in fucking warmth, you lose in your senseless politics.”   
  


Jon agrees. Rules. Politics. Culture. He supposes the lands outside of Westeros are different but he is no more eager to leave Westeros than he is eager to leave his room with Tormund still in it. 

The room is covered in greys and blues outside of the few sparks dying in the hearth. When had the log burned out so fast? A few flickering candles are nearly dying, melted down to their very ends. Signs of time running out are all around him and yet, the dawn has not come yet. Funny, how now that he does not care whom he’s caught sleeping with, kissing, touching, hugging, he must take care the most. 

Tormund tolerates the secrecy only because it’s necessary, but even his patiences has limits. Jon’s too. When they win the war, if they both survive, Jon imagines how it would be to return to the north and disappear between the rolling plains he has fallen in love with twice over. He is more wildman now. He will grow wilder still, and he will leave the sordid rules, the instructions and poised excellence to people who can wield them and use them better than he. Like Sansa. 

He and Tormund will retreat, go far,  _ far _ , away. If only Jon should survive alone he will go besides. If it happens so that Tormund is to outlive him, Jon imagines he will return too and give Jon back to the true north just as he’d told him once to return Ygritte. And if Jon were to perish tonight, enveloped in his lovely, burning heat, Jon will die a happy man, even though he knows Tormund will curse him for leaving before he could swing his first battle strike against the army of the dead.

Jon doesn’t have a particularly big death wish, but death has given him a perspective. Its silence allows him to hear the strong beating drum of Tormund’s heart pounding under his ear. 

Tormund lifts his hands from under the blankets and he begins to trace Jon’s face with them. Over his cheekbone, ear, they travel down to his chin, over his neck, to his shoulder. 

Once, Jon would never have allowed to be seen as less. Small. To allow this kind of gentleness which, at the time, he’d somehow thought would take away from his manhood. They have worked hard for this. He has learned much, and he is glad for it. Now, if only the world would do the same.

Tormund must think Jon has fallen asleep, still as he is, because he lifts both his hands and wraps them around Jon as if he might be taken away, snatched from the bed, or his spirit might escape should he dream. 

There’s a single wretched sound from his throat, as if he wants to take in a breath but he can’t, and then a long exhale, as if whatever Tormund has wanted to contend with was stronger than him, and he has let himself be defeated. “ _ My little crow, _ ” he mutters, a lifetime later, with the heaviness of a death and a rebirth.

####  -

They clean up in the baths and say goodbye, before they separate. Jon goes to greet Davos by the horses, already awake and ready. Tormund watches him from one of the terasses. Though they’d not said it, the words echo in Jon’s mind. Until the Long Night.


End file.
